Intro lecture.docx

Intro lecture – January 14, 2014
Normative vs Descriptive
Descriptive claim: a claim about what is the case
• About how things are
Normative claim: a claim about how things ought to be
• Not really about how things are but how they should be
Both claims can be true or false
• Difference is the subject matter – a difference in what the claims are about
Morality is a normative claim
• Moral claims: claims about how people ought to act, rather than how they
actually act
o ‘It is wrong to break a promise’
Other kinds of normative claims:
• Prudential claims: claims about what would be prudent, or in your self-interest –
it is not morally wrong if you don’t follow the claim but you should, to make
yourself better
o ‘You should eat leafy greens’
• Normative epistemic claims: claims about what one should believe, how one
ought to reason
o ‘One ought not hold inconsistent beliefs’
Moral claims are:
• Normative rather than descriptive.
• They are a particular kind of normative claim – not all normative claims concern
morality
How can we investigate moral questions?
The chief (only) tool can’t be experiment or observation. Why not?
• One cannot infer a normative claim from a purely descriptive claim
o We can’t go from how things are to how things should be
o By watching human behaviour and seeing how people behave does not
tell us how they should behave • ‘Is’ does not imply ‘ought’
Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology
• Can tell us about how people in fact behave
• Can tell us about what people believe about how they ought to behave
o It can’t tell us whether something is morally okay or not
We can give arguments
• Start with claims that are highly plausible and try to argue from those claims to
conclusions that are less obvious/more controversial
o Start from a solid/easily argued point and expand to a tougher issue
An Argument
Def.: Series of propositions aimed at establishing or justifying some point
Contains
1. A conclusion: the proposition the argument is trying to establish
a. There can be intermediate conclusions that lead to the final conclusion
2. Premises: starting points of the argument
Example:
“One should not cause tremendous pain just for one’s own a